Chapter 133 — How poverty is good

In order to elucidate the truth about what we have been saying, we must form our judgment of poverty, by considering riches. External riches are necessary for the good of virtue, since by them we support the body, and help others. Now, things directed to an end must take their goodness from that end. Consequently, external riches must be a good of man—not his chief, but his secondary good, as it were, because the end is a good principally, and other things are according as they are directed to the end. For this reason, some have thought that virtues are man’s greatest good, and external riches, goods of least account. Now, things directed to an end must take their measure from the exigency of the end. Therefore, riches are good insofar as they serve the use of virtue; if this measure be exceeded, so that they hinder the practice of virtue, they are no longer to be reckoned as a good but as an evil. Hence it happens that the possession of riches is good for some who use them for virtue, while to others it is an evil because they are withdrawn thereby from virtue through being either too anxious about them, or too much attached to them, or self-conceited about them.

But since there are virtues of the active and of the contemplative life, both need external riches in different ways. For the contemplative virtues need them only for the support of nature, while the active virtues need them both for that purpose and to support others who share the same life. Hence the contemplative life is the more perfect in that it has fewer needs. To this life indeed it would seem to belong that man occupy himself wholly with divine things, and Christ’s teaching counsels this perfection to man. Consequently, those who seek this perfection are content with a minimum of external riches, namely, as much as suffices to support nature. Hence the Apostle says: If we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content (1 Tim 6:8).

Accordingly, poverty is commendable so far as it frees man from those vices in which some are enmeshed through wealth. Insofar as it removes the anxiety that is occasioned by riches, it is useful to some, namely, those who are disposed to occupy themselves with the better things; but it is harmful to some who, being freed from this anxiety, betake themselves to worse occupations. Hence Gregory says: It often happens that people who are busy in doing well while living as men are used to live are slain by the sword of retirement. (Pope Gregory I, Morals on the Book of Job, bk. 6 ch. 37.) Insofar as poverty removes the good resulting from riches—namely, the assistance of others, and one’s own support—it is simply an evil, except insofar as the assistance whereby one’s neighbor is relieved in temporal things may be compensated by a greater good, in that a man can more freely give himself to the affairs of God and his soul through lacking wealth. But the good of one’s own support is so far necessary that it cannot be compensated by any other, for man should not deprive himself of his livelihood for the sake of obtaining any other good.

Such poverty is therefore commendable when a man, being freed thereby from worldly solicitude, is enabled more freely to occupy himself with divine and spiritual things; yet so as to retain the possibility of lawfully supporting himself, for which purpose not many things are needful. And according as the manner of living in a state of poverty demands less solicitude, so much the more is poverty to be commended, but not according as the poverty is greater. For poverty is not good in itself, but insofar as it frees a man from that which hinders him from being intent on spiritual things. Hence its measure of goodness depends on how far it frees man from the aforesaid obstacles. In fact, this applies to all external things in common: they are so far good as they are serviceable to virtue, but not in themselves.